Jean David Bilé is all smiles. At the end of a long process of negotiations with various banking institutions operating across Cameroon , Aes-Sonel, the company in charge of production and distribution of electric energy which he runs has, in effect, pulled off a very important deal. It is a loan of about 39,3 milliards Fcfa (USD$88.1Milion) granted by a consortium of banks including Standard Chartered Bank (10 Billion Fcfa), Afriland First Bank (10 Billion Fcfa), Bicec (8 Billion Fcfa), Ecobank (6,3 Billion Fcfa) and Crédit Agricole Scb Cameroun (5 Billion Fcfa).
A convention to this effect was signed yesterday, Tuesday December 4 2007, at the Aes-Sonel headquarters in Douala . An accord which, according to the presentation by the General-Director of Aes-Sonel, would contribute to towards financing the thermal substations at Dibamba and at Kribi. The first, a heavy-fuel facility, would have a nominal capacity of 86 megawatts, for a cost of about 52 Billion Fcfa(USD$116.6Million).According to estimates, It should come into service around the months of January 2009.
As for the second, the gaz substation at Kribi, its capacity is estimated at roughly 150 megawatts. The project will be tied to the setting up of a transportation line 225 kilovolts drawn over 100 kilometers. The construction of the Kribi gaz substation requires a budget of 90 Billion Fcfa(USD$202Million), and should come online in January of 2010. The 39,3 Billion loan grated by the bank is, so to speak, a contribution towards the overall investment required of 145 Billion Fcfa expected by Aes-Sonel, and which would have to be realized by the Kribi Project Development Company (Kpdc), a subsidiary of Aes (56%) and the Cameroon government (44%). The construction of the Dibamba and Kribi substations, according to Aes-Sonel, “will allow us to supply Cameroon’s electric grid with supplementary capacity of 230 megawatts ; which would be an increase in the available power of about 25% before 2010”.
Investments
Through its various investments, Aes-Sonel is therefore pursuing an alternative which will cost its dearly: a diversification of its energy sources, in order to “free itself from influences in climate”. According to Jean David Bilé, “This project will allow us to bring some diversity to our production sources, through combustibles, while providing an opportunity for the development of Sanaga Sud , one of the major gaz fields Offshore from Cameroon . The project will also provide for additional capacity to support industrial expansion, including that of Alucam, to satisfy demand in the public sector, which grows by 6% each year, and which is expected to continue growing at the same rate over the coming years”.
The loan convention signed yesterday comes within the context of a visit to Aes-Sonel, between December 3rd and 7th ,2007, of a sixty-member delegation of international lenders, who represented many financial institutions. The goal of this visit, as some information published several days ago reveals, is to evaluate the construction projects at the Dibamba and Kribi substations. This delegation of lenders were scheduled to meet with several members of government this Wednesday in Yaoundé; as well as with officials from the Electricity Regulation Agency (Arsel), the National Hydrocarbons Company(SNH) , from Perenco and from Alucam. At the end of these exchanges, the group of lenders could, in turn, disburse an envelope of 290 millions dollars (approximately 128,6 Billion Fcfa) to Aes-Sonel. The goal, in the end, being to “Urgently resolve the risk of an energy deficit and to contribute towards beating back the specter of power outages …"
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